


Here Comes Trouble

by kijilinn



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Baby symbiote - Freeform, Black Character, Black OC, Character of Color, Gen, HOH character, Multi, Protective Venom Symbiote (Marvel), hard of hearing character, hard of hearing oc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-08-05 16:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kijilinn/pseuds/kijilinn
Summary: Eddie Brock's been living with Venom as a constant companion for the last year. And now, there's a greenish symbiote egg sitting on the coffee table. This does not bode well.





	1. Chapter 1

“You did what.”

“Don’t look at me like that, Eddie.”

“You. Did. What.”

“It’s just a little one.”

Eddie Brock stared down at the fist-sized glob of iridescent green snot. “It’s gonna get bigger, Venom. And what the fuck do we do with it then?”

“Feed it?” the symbiote replied, his chin resting on Eddie’s shoulder as he gazed fondly down at his offspring.

Eddie closed his eyes and brought his hands together over his mouth, prayer-like. “It’s going to need a host.”

“Obviously.”

“How do you propose locating a compatible host and negotiating that particular relationship?”

Venom thrummed in Eddie’s ear and said, “I was thinking Annie might like it.”

Eddie jerked and turned his head to stare as Venom tilted his head to look back. “No. Absolutely not. And wouldn’t that be like incest or something?”

“It’s not like we’re sleeping with her, Eddie. Not yet anyway.”

Eddie groaned and covered his face with his hands. “How long do we have to figure out the host situation before it starts to die?”

“It’s dormant right now,” Venom replied, tone indignant. “I’m not a fool, Eddie. I wouldn’t wake it up until we found someone. It will stay dormant for a few weeks. Once it’s awake, about 12 hours.” He slithered over Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie sighed, giving over control of his arm so Venom could cradle the newborn symbiote in his palm. “It’s so little. It won’t be trouble at all.”

“Somehow,” Eddie sighed, “I think it’s going to be nothing BUT trouble.” Venom made an irritated sound. Eddie smiled slightly and lifted the infant closer to his face to study it. “It is kind of pretty, though.”

“Just wait,” Venom said happily. “She’s gonna be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

“She?” Eddie asked and Venom gave him a toothy grin. “Oh, god,” Eddie groaned and shook his head. “We are in such deep shit.”

#

“Morning, Mrs. Chen.” Violet put two candy bars, a prepackaged sandwich and a bottle of diet Pepsi on the counter.

“Good morning, Vi,” the woman behind the counter said with a smile. “Ten seventy-eight. You know that caffeine is going to stunt your growth.”

“That ship has flown,” Violet snorted as she handed across her cash. “I’m pretty sure I’m not getting any taller.”

“You’re still young,” Mrs. Chen said with a sniff and handed back the change. “There’s time.”

“I’m twenty-six,” laughed Violet.

“Those candy bars will make you fat. No man wants a fat girl.”

Violet chuckled while Mrs. Chen grinned back at her. This was a familiar sparring match, one both knew by heart. “Good thing I’m not limited to men, then, huh?” She collected her lunch and tucked it into her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have a good day, Vi.”

Eddie Brock’s voice reached her as he pushed past the door and glanced over Violet with a smile. Eddie turned his head so she could more easily read his lips. “Good morning, Violet.”

“Morning, Eddie,” Violet smiled back. “Did you actually get some sleep last night? You look… healthy.”

“Gee, thanks,” Eddie said, then twitched his head to the side with an irritated expression. “The asshole across the hall finally decided to move out and took his guitar with him.”

“It’s a start,” Mrs. Chen said. “Now, if you would meditate like I told you–”

“Mandarin, Mrs. Chen!” he replied shortly. “I still don’t speak it.” His head twitched again and he looked at Violet, then away with a sputtered, “No!”

Violet raised an eyebrow and just smiled when he looked at her again with a sheepish expression. Eddie Brock had always been a little odd, but his neuroses seemed a little more pronounced in the wake of everything that had happened with the Life Foundation last year. Some of those twitches seemed akin to Tourette’s and Vi was more than willing to forgive him the distracted pieces of conversation: he was kind to everyone, generous with the homeless in spite of his own lack of funds, and liked cats. It didn’t hurt that he was mindful of her limited hearing and made sure he always faced her when he talked. He couldn’t be all bad, no matter how much of an asshole he seemed on his show sometimes. “Thank you for sparing me the ask, then,” she grinned at him and Eddie blinked in confusion. “I was going to ask if you wanted to get coffee, but…”

“What? No, I wasn’t talking to you,” he floundered, then looked at her again, brow furrowed. “What?”

“Coffee,” she repeated. “Though maybe decaf would be a better option for you.”

“Ew.” His mouth moved, but Violet had the strange feeling of hearing the sounds of the expression out of sync with Eddie’s face. She stared at him while he rubbed his hands over his face for a second. “You don’t want to have coffee with me, Vi. I’m insane.”

Violet shrugged the odd sensation away slowly and grinned. “Honestly, that’s one of the things I like about you.”

“Yes. Coffee.” Eddie twitched and glared, then muttered, “Not a good idea.”

“Well, if you and your parasite make up your mind,” she said, “here’s my number. Call me or text me or something. The offer’s there, Eddie.”

Eddie stared at the scrap of paper she handed him and then looked up at her and said, “He’s not a parasite.”

Violet smiled as she headed for the door. “Regardless, he’s welcome, too. Have a good day, Eddie.” He said something else, but she didn’t catch it as she vanished out the door.

#

“She’s perfect.”

“That is not an option.”

“You know I’m right.”

“I know no such thing. Violet is a nice person. She’s a teacher, for Chrissake. She does not–”

“Don’t say it, Eddie.”

“She does not deserve the headache of adjusting to an alien in her head. We don’t even know if she’s compatible.”

“She is.”

Eddie spun around in his apartment and half-crouched, hands fisted and his arms flexed in front of him. “But how do you KNOW that? You could kill her. You could kill it!”

“Her.”

“You could kill them both.”

Venom twitched a tentacle in irritation. “Trust me, Eddie. I know the risks far better than you do. Violet is a compatible match with Trouble. I just know and it’s too complicated to explain to you right now.”

“I can’t believe you named her Trouble,” Eddie groaned into his hands. “I mean, it’s accurate, but…”

“It seemed like a fitting nickname and now I can’t stop.” He reached the pseudopod of himself over to pick up the ovoid of shimmering green. “She needs a host,” Venom said in as gentle a tone as he could manage, holding the sleeping symbiote up in front of Eddie’s face. “Vi is an excellent host. She’s a teacher, you said so yourself. She knows how to talk to children. Trouble will learn so much from her.” Eddie eyed Venom’s daughter warily and Venom sighed. “Please. Just call her for coffee. If it goes well, maybe we can talk to her about it.”

“You want to actually talk to her about implanting an alien symbiote?” Eddie sputtered. “Yeah, because that will go fantastically.”

“She said I was welcome,” Venom replied in a petulant tone.

“She thought she was talking about my imaginary friend.”

“I’m not imaginary!”

“I know that and you know that but my point is that she doesn’t know that,” Eddie snapped. “Just because she invited you doesn’t mean she knows you exist.”

“That’s hurtful, Eddie.”

“Doesn’t make it not true.”

When Eddie tried to turn away and head for the fridge, Venom swung around in front of him again, still holding Trouble up at eye-level. “It’s important that we try,” he said. “If she thinks we’re crazy, it won’t change that much, will it? If she believes us and says no, we just keep looking.” Eddie made a sound somewhere between a growl and a whine and Venom bounced the sleeping baby once. “Please?”

“I think I liked you better when you only wanted to eat everyone I knew,” Eddie grumbled as he picked up the phone and opened his contacts to Violet’s number.

#

Violet leaned on the wall beside the ladies’ room on the first floor. She had seen the trio of junior girls vanish inside just as she was coming up and they had been there most of the between-class break. There was no smoke smell, which was an improvement and she didn’t really feel like reminding half a dozen high school freshmen that teachers also pee. She could always walk back to the teachers’ lounge and use the bathroom there, but it meant walking up two more floors and to the opposite end of the building. If the girls would just leave this one, she could pee in peace.

The hallway bell rang, warning the students that the next period would be starting. The sound vibrated on her nerves and Violet gritted her teeth. She supposed she should be thankful she could hear it at all and didn’t need the flashers to keep track of class timing, but she still hated that particular pitch.  Someone inside the bathroom yelped and Violet smiled to herself, letting her head rest against the wall as all the girls stumbled free of the bathroom and catapulted themselves down the hallway in different directions to get to class. When they were gone, she opened the door and strolled inside.

“You’re going to be late for class, Brie.”

The door to the handicapped stall slowly crept open and Violet smiled at the shy girl who peeped out at her. “Sorry, Vi.”

“It’s okay,” Violet said with a sigh and held her arms out for her sister. “Were those girls teasing you again?”

“No.” Brie came out of the stall, one arm clutched across her torso and gripping the other. She didn’t come any closer, her head tucked in shame. “They didn’t know I was here.”

Violet huffed out a breath and pulled her younger sister into a hug. “I’m sorry things are so hard on you here,” she murmured when Brie finally relaxed in her arms. “I would make it better if I could.”

Brie mumbled something, but signed, “Okay.” Outside, the final bell rang and Brie twitched. “Can I get a hall pass?”

“Of course.” Violet kissed her sister’s forehead. “I have to pee first. Just wait a second.” When she was done and she had washed her hands and double-checked her appearance, Violet walked with Brie down the hallway to her next class. “How’s Bio with Mr. Templar?”

“Good,” Brie said with a nod. “I don’t like the dissection that much, but it’s cool having all the animals in class. The corn snake likes me.”

Violet grinned. “That is the chillest corn snake I’ve ever met.” At the door to the biology lab, she stopped and hugged her sister once more. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Brie signed back and hugged her tight before vanishing inside.

“Sorry she’s late, Mr. Templar,” Violet said as she stuck her head into the room. “My fault.” The biology teacher shook his head and waved a hand to acknowledge and Violet pulled back to wander down the hall towards her classroom again. She had been a social studies and language teacher in San Francisco for about two years now. This was Brie’s first year as one of her students, though and she knew it was rough on her sister to be related to a teacher. She had been pleased when Brie signed up to take her first-year American Sign Language class, even if it had been because she was already fluent. “Any excuse,” Violet muttered to herself as she sat down at her desk.

Their father had vanished shortly after Brie was born. When Violet was in college, their mother, struggling under the financial stress of putting one daughter through school while the other was still in grade school, had turned to some unconventional ways of paying her bills and died under circumstances that had been iffy at best. Brie stayed with their grandmother until Violet had finished her degree, at which point she had taken over her sister’s full custody. For all the bumps in their history, they were devoted to each other and Vi couldn’t imagine her life without Brie in it.

Violet jumped when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and glanced at the face, surprised to see a text there which read, “Vi its eddie.”

“As articulate in text as he is in life,” she chuckled and typed back, “Hey, Eddie. What’s up?”

“u serious re coffee?”

“Yes,” Violet said as she typed, trying not to laugh. “I was serious.”

“Still?”

“Yes, still.”

It took a long time for Eddie to answer this time and Violet wondered if he was busy. Then, the phone jumped again with a string of suddenly delivered texts: “Great.” “So after school?” “cuz teacher” “should i pick u up?” “or not” “sorry nervous”

Laughing into her hand, Violet took a moment to compose herself before she typed back, “Today after school is great. I need to make sure my sister’s set for dinner, but then I’m free.”

“Sister. Right. Bree?”

“Brie.”

“Like the cheese.”

“Yes. Like the cheese.” Violet shook her head, chewing her lip in amusement.

“4:30?”

“Where?”

“Mrs. Chen?”

Violet burst into laughter and put her head down on her desk. “He’s trying so hard,” she giggled into her arm. Once she’d gotten herself back under control, she typed, “Meeting at Mrs. Chen’s would be fine. As long as we’re not including her in the coffee. I don’t need to hear about how I’m stunting my growth again.”

“Great! c uthen”

Violet shook her head with a smile as she closed her phone. “You need some serious typing lessons, Brock. Wow.”

#

Eddie paced the sidewalk outside of Mrs. Chen’s mini-market, his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket and his shoulders shrugged up. He was too warm in the San Francisco fall, but the posture made him feel better, more protected. It was a stance he’d picked up in New York and it had never really gone away, like his accent. “Why are you nervous, Eddie?”

“Why am I nervous?” he muttered back. “We’re waiting for a very nice, very intelligent lady to come and drink coffee with us so we can try to get her to agree to host your spawn. Why would I not be nervous?”

“She’s pretty, too.”

“Shut up.”

“She will agree, Eddie. Don’t worry. She’s perfect for Trouble and she’ll know it when she sees her.”

“Eddie?”

Eddie staggered to a halt and looked up to see Violet standing nearby, her smile warm and genuine if a little puzzled. “Hi!” he said and then winced at how overly bright it sounded. He picked up and discarded half a dozen additional things to say, most of them asinine or nonsensical before he finally settled on, “Coffee?”

“So smooth, Eddie.”

He clenched his jaw on the impulse to respond and instead listened while Venom chuckled in his head. “Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“You know me,” Violet smiled. “Don’t be nervous. I don’t bite.”

“I do.”

“Not her,” Eddie snapped. Violet raised her eyebrows in silence while he sorted out his response. “Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you. I know I sound crazy, but I’m not.”

“I know.” Violet shrugged and then nodded toward the street. “Shall we? I know a place if you’re not sure where to go.” When Eddie sighed and nodded, she smiled and they started walking. “I know you’re not crazy, Eddie. I don’t offer to have coffee with crazy people. Mentally unstable, potentially mentally ill, sure. But not crazy.”

“Unstable,” Eddie chuckled weakly. “Hit the nail on the head there.”

Violet turned at a side street and Eddie followed her to a small coffee shop with a llama-head logo. She ordered a spiced mocha and he got a regular coffee and they sat at a table under the window, watching each other. Eddie watched when Violet sipped her mocha and licked the foam from her lip. In the back of his mind, Venom roiled happily and growled, “She’s perfect.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Eddie managed to blurt instead of responding directly to Venom.

Violet nodded. “Our parents are gone, so it’s just us now. Me and Brie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Violet shrugged and sipped her coffee. “Dad was a deadbeat. Mom made some bad choices. But I’ve got Brie and she’s got me and as long as we’ve got that, I think we’ll be okay.”

“Brie and me and Trouble makes three.”

“Shut up.” Eddie winced. “Sorry. Again.”

Violet tipped her head thoughtfully. “I’ve heard you say you have a parasite. Is that who you talk to?”

“He’s not a parasite,” Eddie sighed helplessly and put his hands flat on the table on either side of his coffee. “He’s an alien. He can’t survive without me or someone like me, anyway.”

“Symbiotic relationship,” Violet said with a slow nod. “You give him… a body to live in. What does he give you?”

“Strength,” Venom replied and he and Eddie both watched in fascination when Violet’s head jerked back and her eyes narrowed. “Power. Protection.”

“That’s him.” Violet’s expression shifted from confused to something closer to clarity. “That’s him talking, isn’t it?”

Eddie almost wished he could exchange a bewildered look with Venom. He could feel the symbiote’s confusion as strongly as his own. “Yeah. How could you tell?”

“Your mouth moves out of sync,” Violet said. “It’s like… watching a badly dubbed foreign film.”

In a rush, Venom spread up Eddie’s neck to partially cover his mouth and said excitedly, “You can hear me.”

“Not exactly,” Violet said and her eyes were wide and almost afraid. “I’m… sure you know that I’m hard of hearing. I can’t… hear you as much as I can hear a dull sound when you speak and I follow Eddie’s lips for context.” She paused as Venom’s massive fangs spread in a grin. “Lips help with that, incidentally. I’m not a tooth-reader.”

“Oh, I like her, Eddie,” Venom said happily. “I knew she was perfect.”

With a focused effort, Eddie pushed the spread of black symbiote down below his collar and Venom subsided with a grumble before anyone else in the shop noticed them. “I’m sorry about that,” he said quietly. “He just gets excited.”

“Willful,” chuckled Violet and Eddie nodded with a sheepish grin. “I’m a teacher, Eddie. I’ve seen worse.”

Eddie shifted and blinked when he realized that there was something smooth and ovoid in his hand. “What the fuck,” he muttered at Venom. “You brought her!?”

“Yes. She will understand, Eddie. She already understands. Show her.”

“Fuck,” Eddie sighed and then turned his hand over on the table. In his palm sat the shimmering, iridescent egg of Trouble. “Okay, so this is gonna sound weird.”

Violet was silent for a moment, then held out her hands. “Let me see her.”

“She’s still asleep,” Eddie said as he rolled the egg into Violet’s hands. “Venom says he can wake her up and when she’s awake, she needs to have a host. He said twelve hours, max before she starts to die without a host.”

Violet’s eyes darted up from the egg to Eddie’s face as he spoke, absorbing his words before she returned to staring. “She’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” said Venom.

“Does it hurt?” Violet asked when she looked up again and Eddie stared in shock.

“You don’t even know what you’re asking me,” he said helplessly. “You don’t even know what she is. What he is. What they do.” He leaned across the table to say quietly but still with clearly enunciated words, “They eat people, Vi. Alive.”

“I know some people I wouldn’t mind eating,” Violet replied, her voice almost subvocal to make sure nobody could hear. “Can you control who they eat?”

“We have an agreement,” Eddie said. “You can’t be serious, though. Violet, they–”

“I understood you the first time,” she interrupted him and her dark eyes flashed when she met his gaze. “He gains a body, you gain power, strength, protection? Do you understand what I would do to keep my sister safe, Eddie?” They stared at each other for a moment before she said, “Wake her up.”

Venom uncurled from Eddie’s arm, slipped a tendril across the table and nudged the egg in Violet’s hand. The surface softened and Violet closed her hand carefully, cradling the shape as it became amorphous, melting against her skin and seeking curiously up her arm. “It does hurt,” Eddie whispered. “For a while. It gets better.”

“Thank you,” Violet smiled at him as the symbiote began to pick up speed and climbed under her sleeve, up her shoulder, across her neck and extended a tendril to touch her lips. She gasped hard at the pain when the silvery-green creature began to sink into her skin, coursing through her throat and along her veins until it found space where it belonged. Violet put her head down on the table with a soft whimper and Eddie winced, put his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her body temperature spiking high with fever, just as he had when he had taken Venom on.

“It gets better,” he promised and felt worse when he realized she probably couldn’t hear him.

“Here comes Trouble,” murmured Venom and he extended a small part of himself to kiss Violet’s forehead as she spiraled into unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

Violet woke up with a pounding headache and automatically reached for her phone. Squinting into the damnable light of the screen, she managed to text "migraine" and "out sick" to the principal's secretary before she passed out again. She woke up to Brie's tentative touch on her shoulder. "I'm sick," she told her sister. "Can you manage?"

"I need money for lunch," Brie answered and Violet nodded toward her wallet. "Twenty?"

"Fine."

"Can you get you anything?"

_Food._

Violet closed her eyes, remembering in a flash everything that had happened in the coffee shop with Eddie and Venom. Carefully, she separated the immediate gut-level reaction from her ability to communicate and told her sister, "There are migraine pills in the bathroom. Water. If you could get me a bottle of Gatorade when you come home, that'd be awesome. I'll order in Chinese."

_I'm hungry._

"Wait," Violet snapped and Brie raised her eyebrows. Now she knew intimately how Eddie felt talking to Venom. What a treat. "I need a hug."

Brie smiled and crawled onto the bed to hug her sister. Violet let out a long sigh as she held her and had the odd sensation of something else watching her with interest. _That's nice. What is it?_

"Have a good day," Violet said as she signed "I love you."

"I love you," Brie signed back as she got up and skittered out of the apartment to catch the bus.

"That was a hug," Violet signed. To her surprise, the consciousness coalesced into a small head and a pair of hands that hovered near her face. The head, while similar to Venom in shape, was more expressive and had a far more human-shaped mouth.

"I liked it," the symbiote signed, long claws flashing through the familiar shapes with the speed and fluency of someone born deaf. "Again?"

"Yes, again," Violet replied, watching her new body-mate warily. "If you can speak into my mind, why sign?"

"You sign to people. Is it not normal?"

Violet smiled. "Sign language isn't a common language here. It's just the one I'm most comfortable with."

"Should I not sign?"

"Not if someone can see you."

"Well, duh." The sign was for "obvious" but the expressively rolled eyes and emphatic hand movements changed the meaning so dramatically that Violet burst out laughing. "This is for us. And for Daddy."

"Daddy?" Violet mimicked the sign and raised an eyebrow. An image formed in her mind of Venom and Eddie and she chuckled. "Eddie is not 'daddy,'" she said, fingerspelling the last word.

"Yes Daddy," Trouble replied emphatically, bouncing her thumb off her forehead, fingers fanned wide. Before the argument could continue, the symbiote seemed to shrink in on herself and signed, "Hungry."

"Me, too, kiddo," Violet chuckled and stood up out of the bed to pull a robe on over her shoulders. "Let's get some coffee and breakfast. Do you have a name?"

"Daddy calls me Trouble."

Violet couldn't resist laughing. "Which daddy?"

"Daddy," Trouble repeated, again with the emphatic bounce of her thumb. Violet just shook her head with a smile and poured herself a mug of coffee. "I'm hungry," Trouble signed, her expression one of intimate disgust as she watched Violet drinking the coffee. The image she projected into Violet's mind turned her stomach: a first-person view of biting the head off of a pigeon and shredding it to pieces before consuming it, feathers, bones and all.

"We are not eating live pigeons," Violet informed her in a flurry of sign. "Don't even think about it. That's gross."

"That's gross," mimicked Trouble, indicating the hardboiled egg and slices of bread Violet had taken out of the fridge in order to make toast. "It's already dead."

"You may like things raw and moving," Violet said and paused to put the bread in the toaster, "but humans need their food cooked." She started to peel the egg over the trash can while Trouble rested her chin on her shoulder, giving Violet the odd feeling of being two-headed. "Does it have to be alive?" Violet asked aloud carefully.

 _It's better that way,_ Trouble replied in her mind. _I can probably make due with recently dead if I have to._

 _Are there any other things you can eat other than meat?_ Immediately, Violet felt her mouth starting to water and Trouble projected a clear image of a massive chocolate Easter bunny Violet remembered from her childhood. It had been maybe eight inches tall in reality, but she remembered it as longer than her arm and weighing five pounds. _Chocolate?_ Violet asked.

 _The good stuff,_ Trouble agreed. _None of this chocolate flavoring bullshit._

"Hey," Violet said aloud. "Watch your language."

Oh, please, Trouble snorted. You say worse all the time.

"It's not polite," Violet said and buttered her toast. "Neither is eating people."

"Who said anything about eating people?" Trouble signed, expression amused and hands exaggerating the noun. "I just wanted a pigeon." Before Violet could answer, Trouble arched her neck up and looked over their shoulder. "Daddy's texting."

"How do you know?" Violet asked as she went back to the bedroom for her phone. Indeed, there was a text from Eddie which only read "Vi?"

"There is no Vi," she typed back. "Only Zhule." To her amusement, Trouble giggled, chin on her shoulder.

 _I heard the vibration,_ Trouble said in her mind.

Violet felt a brief pang of jealousy before pushing it away to read the reply from Eddie: "Okay, Zhule, could you tell Violet to text me when she's back? I want to check on her."

"Venom is a better texter than you are," Violet typed. "You should be ashamed, Eddie."

"He is appropriately shamed."

"At least I know where your sense of humor comes from," chuckled Violet.

 _Yeah_ , whispered Trouble, _you._

Violet brushed the thought away and read, "Are you okay? I hated leaving you unconscious like that last night but Eddie wouldn't let us stay."

 _Hungry,_ whispered Trouble, a nagging almost-whine in her mental voice.

Violet smiled and typed, "We're hungry. Or Trouble is hungry. I just had an egg and toast. Other than that and the massive migraine I had when I woke up, we're doing okay."

"Fever? Chills?"

"I'm running a little bit of a fever," Violet admitted. "Nothing major, though. Not beyond what I sometimes get with a migraine anyway."

"We will bring you something appropriate to eat," Venom texted and Violet eyed the words nervously.

"What does that mean?"

"Appropriate."

"That does not answer the question, Eddie. Venom." Violet frowned and chewed her lip when no answer came. "Oh, great," she sighed and looked at Trouble where she continued to perch on her shoulder like a massive iridescent parrot. "What does appropriate mean?"

"I assume it means something I can eat alive without bothering your delicate moral sensibilities."

"I'm not delicate."

"You're moral, though." Trouble slithered down Violet's arm and half-dragged them to the window that overlooked the street. "I hope it's a rat." She signed this complete with a whiskered rat nose formed from the protoplasm of her face.

"What do you know about rats?" Violet laughed. "You were born yesterday. Literally."

Trouble treated her to a cascade of her own personal memories of rats, both the pet kind and the pest kind, in addition to every memory Eddie had of dealing with rodents, as well as several sizable creatures that looked alien enough that Violet assumed they were off-planet versions of rats. "The orloni were tasty, according to Daddy's progenitor. Juicy but still crunchy."

Violet made a face and tried not to examine the memories too closely as she drank her coffee. "Well, if I ever doubted that you were alien, I don't now. That was gross, T." She signed simply the letter with her right hand and Trouble turned her head to study the hand sign.

"Rat," she signed, then looked at Violet and repeated the sign but with a T hand shape.

"I'm not calling you rat with a T." The street-level buzzer was attached to a widget that relayed the alert to an app on her phone and Violet glanced down at the phone when it vibrated. "Eddie's here." She walked to the door to buzz him inside the building while Trouble danced wildly across her skin in excitement.

When Eddie knocked on the door and Violet let him in, a surge of darkness engulfed her and Violet held back a scream when Trouble swarmed her head and encased her in protoplasm to shout, "Daddy!" She found herself hugging Eddie, who had also yelped, drowning in Venom's warm reception to his daughter.

"This is going to take some getting used to," Violet said, hoping Eddie could understand her words. He just nodded against her shoulder while the symbiotes rushed over and around them, chattering and sharing thoughts and memories and ideas at lightning speed. After a few minutes, the embrace became more comfortable and Violet let out a long sigh, just leaning her head on Eddie's shoulder. "Can we sit down for this?" she asked. "I still haven't finished my coffee and I'm sure Eddie would like a cup, too."

Both symbiotes froze in place and then retreated to their respective hosts. "Sorry," Trouble signed, her head low.

Eddie stared at the iridescent green symbiote as she hovered near Violet's shoulder. "She's signing."

"Of course she's signing, you idiot," Venom snorted. "We speak whatever languages you do and use whatever language you think in to talk to you."

"Obviously," signed Trouble, again with the aggressively teenaged body language and expression that made Violet snort into her coffee.

"I think I'd better learn to sign," Eddie said with a sheepish grin.

"It wouldn't hurt," Violet chuckled. "Coffee?"

"Please."

"Please," signed Trouble to Eddie and he blinked. "If you're going to learn," she said and signed, "might as well start now."

"She has a point," grinned Violet as she poured the coffee, then stopped to look back just as Trouble turned to look at her. "I understood you." Trouble just nodded and Violet swallowed a lump in her throat to smile. "Thank you." Trouble sank back into her skin for a moment to give her the equivalent of an internal hug before returning to hovering at her side. When she turned, Eddie and Venom were both watching her with a puzzled expression. "When my back is to a conversation, I'm shut out of it," she explained. "I know it's happening, but I can't understand it or participate." She handed a mug to Eddie and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Your speech is really good," Eddie said as he took the mug and sat across from her. "It took Mrs. Chen hitting me upside the head for me to realize you were deaf."

Violet smiled grimly. "Thank you. I'm not completely deaf, obviously. It's made it easier to cope in some ways." She looked up to find Trouble interpreting her speech into sign. "You can stop showing off now."

"He should be getting used to watching sign and listening together," Trouble sniffed. "Then you won't need to vocalize."

"But I still will." When Trouble looked affronted, Violet smiled. "It's polite, T. It's not his fault he's hearing."

"What was that one?" Eddie asked suddenly, then blushed when he realized he'd interrupted their conversation. "Sorry."

"Sorry," Trouble said and signed and Eddie imitated her.

"This?" Violet asked, repeating the sign used for a hearing person. "It means you can hear. The grammar for ASL is different from English."

"There's grammar?" Eddie asked in surprise.

"Duh!" cried Trouble, clearly insulted and Violet sighed, waving the symbiote into calmness again.

"It's not just hand signs for English words," she said to Eddie. "It has its own grammar and colloquialisms, its own puns. It's a completely separate language. That's why I'm teaching it as a second language at the school."

Trouble made an unfortunate sound somewhere between a whimper and a gassy growl. A pang of hunger and the sudden, overwhelming desire to bite the head off her neighbor's Weimaraner washed over Violet and she gasped as Trouble took over her head to inform them all, "I'm hungry." In a flash of motion, Venom threw something at her and Trouble moved to catch it, devouring the object before Violet had a chance to identify it. "More?" she asked her father hopefully. Venom threw several more objects for her to catch and eat, which eventually allowed Violet to figure them out: stunned seagulls.

When Trouble had eaten her fill and subsided back against Violet's shoulder, Vi looked at Venom and Eddie. "I just ate half a dozen live seagulls."

"Yup," agreed Eddie.

"What the hell is that going to do to my body?"

"Nothing," said Eddie with a shrug. "I've never had a reaction from what Venom eats. I assume they process and filter it so it's usable by our bodies, too." He turned to glare at Venom, who recoiled with a sheepish expression that reminded Violet of the same look on Eddie's face. "As long as it goes through HIS mouth and not mine. If I eat something he thinks tastes good, I can still get sick. Speaking of which, how are you doing? You said you had a migraine and a fever?"

"Both are better now," Violet said.

"I was hungry," added Trouble. "I'm not now. Thank you."

"How often is she going to need to eat like that?" Violet asked nervously, glancing at the silvery green head on her shoulder. Trouble extended her tongue to lick Violet's nose affectionately.

"About once a week," said Eddie. "As long as you're eating enough regular food, they don't need a lot of ingested calories. It's the... what is it?" He looked at Venom for clarification.

"Phenethylamine," supplied Venom. "It's a brain stimulant for humans, apparently. We metabolize it as food the way you do calories."

Violet frowned, considering. "So... it's a brain chemical. Why does your meat have to be alive in order for you to metabolize it?"

A long, profound silence answered her until Venom muttered something that had Eddie staring and yelling at him. Neither had bothered to enunciate their argument for Violet, so she turned to look pointedly at Trouble. The symbiote looked just as uncomfortable as her progenitor until she finally said into Violet's mind, _It doesn't have to be alive. It just has to be raw and with the brain intact. We can get it from chocolate, as long as it's actually chocolate and not the flavored candy-wax. And..._

"And?" Violet asked irritably.

"If you exercise," signed Trouble. "Heavy exercise like running for half an hour to an hour. Runner's high generates it."

"So I could have been feeding you by taking a long jog and eating a Godiva bar." Violet sighed when Trouble nodded. "Let me get my shoes."

"But we like the adrenaline, too," protested Trouble as she retrieved her running shoes from the closet. "It's sweeter. It's like adding flavored creamer to your coffee. It just tastes better."

"I will give up flavored creamer if you agree to give up live food," snapped Violet. "I don't appreciate being lied to, Trouble."

"I'm sorry!" Trouble's face was a mix of agony and guilt as she propelled herself ahead of Violet to sign at her. "I didn't mean to lie to you, Violet. I didn't. I'm sorry. I was just hungry and I didn't know. Not really. I didn't get it. I was hungry." When Violet didn't answer, panic started to spread in the symbiote's face and motions. "Please, Vi, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

"You let me eat six birds, Trouble."

If she had had her own lungs, Trouble would have been hyperventilating. Her panic increased until she was all but sobbing, clinging to Violet. "Please don't shut me out, Violet. Please!"

Violet paused in the middle of tying one of her shoes when Venom inserted himself between her face and her shoe. "She needs you," he informed her carefully. He had developed lips long enough to communicate with her. "It isn't just your body and your metabolism she needs. She needs YOU."

Violet looked at where the symbiote was clinging to her arm and realized that Trouble had actually been pushed out of her body, repelled like water on an oiled canvas. The only reason it had felt like the begging had stopped was because she could no longer hear Trouble's voice. "Oh, baby," she whispered and let her guard down again. Trouble surged back into place and then nestled face and hands against Violet's chest, just above her breasts.

"She is a baby," Venom agreed soberly and Eddie sat down on the floor across from her so his symbiote wasn't quite so extended. "She shares my genetic memory and some of the memories of things I've done and experienced with Eddie, but she doesn't know everything I do. She can't. Her consciousness isn't developed enough to contain it."

Violet sighed and hugged her arms to her chest, cradling Trouble as best she could. "I'm sorry," she said, rubbing one fist against her shoulder. "I was just upset. I don't like killing things, especially if there's another way." Trouble shivered all over, a sensation like a child sniffling and Violet smiled. "I'm not mad," she added gently. "So, no more live seagulls?"

"And we go running every day?" asked Trouble.

"Every day," agreed Violet.

"No more seagulls," said Trouble with a little nod against Violet's skin. "Unless it's my birthday."

"Fine, you can have one seagull or rat or pigeon or whatever small animal you want for your birthday," sighed Violet. "We're calling today the celebration of yesterday to justify the wholesale slaughter of seagulls." After a few moments, she tilted her chin down and looked at Trouble. "Are you okay?"

"Better," sniffled Trouble and she disengaged from her clinging snuggle to hover beside Violet again. "So now what?"

"I was thinking we could talk you through melding," Venom said, engulfing Eddie as he said the last word so it came out in a blend of their voices. Violet eyed the muscular creature sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her and raised an eyebrow. "Every symbiote bonds different," he added, "because every host is different, every symbiote is different. She will probably do different things for you than what happens with us."

"Okay," Violet said with a long sigh. "What do I do?"

Trust me, whispered Trouble in her mind and Violet smiled, closed her eyes and let go.


	3. Trouble Flies

_ This is how you see. _

_ Yup. _

_ This is incredible, Trouble. _

_ I know, right? I'm pretty cool. _

_ Everything is so much... stronger. Smells, colors. I can hear. Like, actually hear things. _

_ Technically, we hear things. I could make it permanent for you, though. Daddy says we can heal our hosts if they're damaged. _

    Violet jerked in surprise and turned from her wonder at the new sensations to examine this new idea. She looked around her apartment, studying the new variety of colors and shapes that shifted across Venom's skin. They watched her with the same intensity and she could feel their attention like a breeze on bare skin.  _ Let's hold off on that for the time being, _ she told Trouble carefully.  _ There's a lot more to being Deaf than just not hearing. _

_ But I could fix you. _

_ I'm not broken. _

_ Part of you doesn't work. _

_ I was born this way, Trouble. Let it go. There's too much else going on right now to get into it, okay? _

    Trouble subsided with a quiet grumble and let Violet focus on her new angles of perception. "I'm taller," she said aloud and Venom chuckled. "I feel like everything's faster."

    "Your reflexes are probably enhanced," Venom said. "And your strength. Want to go play?"

    "Yes." Trouble surged with delight at the idea and Violet reined her back in with a sigh. "Maybe. If we can find a place that's not obvious. We shouldn't be seen."

    Venom shrugged. "Mrs. Chen has seen us. You'd be surprised how calm people are about us."

    "Terrified speechless is not the same thing as calm," snorted Violet and Trouble. They flexed her hands, studied the long, silver-green claws and then looked out the window of the apartment. "I know a park we could play in."

    "Do you one better," grinned Venom. "We've got a back way into the sewers."

    Trouble's mouth watered. "Rats."

    "Nope," said Violet and the symbiote whined. "We already agreed. No animals except on your birthday." They cracked her neck thoughtfully--a movement Violet found surprisingly satisfying, having never done it before--and said, "I can't imagine why the sewer wouldn't be a safe enough option. I'd rather go up than down, though. If I could."

    "Roof is always an option," agreed Venom. "Though Eddie is not good with heights and persists in reminding us."

    Violet and Trouble grinned. "Suck it up, Eddie." Before either Venom or Eddie could answer, the apartment window was thrown open and they had crawled out, up the side of the brick building and to the roof with lightning speed. 

    "She's faster than we are," observed Eddie. "She learns faster, too."

    "They are younger than we are," replied Venom as they climbed out the window to follow her up, "and probably smarter." The climb wasn't a long one, since Violet's building was only four stories tall and she lived on the second. At the roof they found Trouble and Violet standing at the very edge of the building, long claws wrapped around an antenna and her whole body leaned out into the incoming breeze. "Don't fall," Venom and Eddie said, though Venom chuckled when he spoke.

    "Everything is so beautiful," they breathed, eyes wide. "I never realized it. I never knew."

    "She sounds like you," chuckled Eddie.

    "Can't imagine why," Venom replied with a snort. They watched as the pair danced along the edge of the building with surprising grace and focus before Venom murmured, "She dances. Violet."

    "Twenty-two fucking years of ballet," she replied without stopping. "Started when I was five. They told me I'd never make it professionally because I'm Deaf." She stretched and bowed, spun and flirted with the edge until Eddie was dizzy just watching her. "Told them all to fuck themselves. I was going to dance anyway." She took one more dramatic spin and then jumped right off the side of the building. 

    "Violet!" Eddie screamed and Venom took them over the edge after her, only to find her using a telephone pole like a pole dancer. "My god, she's insane." Venom laughed and applauded when Trouble and Violet stopped to cling to the wooden pole. The protoplasm that skinned them rippled and shimmered brilliantly green, almost like a hummingbird as they watched. "Are you okay?" Eddie insisted on asking.

    Trouble shinnied back up the pole until she could jump easily back to the side of the building beside Venom and Eddie. "I have never been so okay in my entire life, Eddie," Violet said. "You have no idea." She swiped one hand over her forehead, shedding the symbiote's face like a hood so she could look at Eddie with her own eyes sparkling almost amber in the early afternoon light. "Thank you," she said, her hand moving out from her lip. "You don't know what this means to me. Either of you. I would say any of you, but--"

    "She knows it isn't true," interrupted Trouble with a grin of her own, sliding sideways to join the conversation and still using their joined hands to sign. "Daddy, this is awesome. You should dance with us!"

    "I have four left feet," Eddie informed them with a sardonic smile. "You don't want to dance with me." Venom shivered on his skin and Eddie paused, worried. "We're not dancing, Venom. We're not. We can't."

    With Eddie still yelling protests, Venom walked across the roof and bowed to Trouble, offering her his hand. "Show me what you've learned," he grinned at his daughter.

    Trouble beamed at him and took his hand, spun herself in against his chest and then back out. She stepped to music no one else could hear, but Venom watched her and followed her movements. He kept to following where she lead, lifting when she jumped and catching her when she dropped. Her movements were poetry and he swelled with pride to see her. "Swing me," she said as she caught his hand and began a spin around him. He nodded and continued the circle, pulling her momentum into a wide arc that drew her feet from the ground and had her giggling as she spiraled back down. The pure joy in the sound even gave Eddie pause. Trouble was lean and lithe and possessed a grace almost unfathomable in a human being, even if her body was humanoid. 

    When she finally stopped, she hugged Venom tightly and he hugged her back. The symbiotes meshed, leaving the humans hugging each other in the center of an affectionate storm of alien biomass. "You're incredible," Eddie said, leaning back enough so Violet could see his face. 

    "She's incredible," countered Violet.

    "We are incredible," Trouble insisted and Venom's laughter shook them all. 

    They raced each other across rooftops. They sparred, hand to hand and symbiote to symbiote. Violet, wearing a dark green hooded sweatshirt with a ragged, toothy hem and headphones that looked suspiciously like clawed hands, bought a pound of hand made fudge from a shop and they split it on a park bench with coffee. "Now I just have to explain to Brie where the hoodie came from," Violet observed when she glanced at her phone and saw it was nearing two o'clock. 

    "We should tell her," Trouble said cheerfully, a quiet, disembodied voice in the public place. "She will be less afraid if we tell her directly."

    Eddie frowned, studying the piece of fudge in his hand. "I'm glad to hear your first instinct isn't to eat her, Trouble. Like someone I know."

    "I made sure she remembered empathy for humans," sniffed Venom. "Some humans. As determined by her host." His tongue slithered up out of Eddie's collar and poked at the fudge hopefully. "This is good. Why have we not had this before, Eddie?"

    "It's expensive," smiled Violet. "I thought we deserved a treat." When Trouble started to whine quietly, she added, "Don't get used to it. Treat. We need to establish treat as a rarity, okay? Rats. Treats. Pigeons. Treats. Fudge. Treats."

    "There's a comparison I'll bet you never thought you'd be making," Eddie grinned. "What are you going to tell Brie?"

    Violet sighed and rested her elbow on the back of the bench, her head on her hand. "I wish I knew. What did you tell your family? Your friends?"

    Eddie was quiet for a moment, then smiled, a quick, fleeting smile. "My friends were the ones to tell me, actually. My ex and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend's a doctor. He told me I had a parasite--" Venom growled and Eddie rolled his eyes. "--which we know isn't true. And Venom borrowed Annie when we were separated, so she knows better than most people what we are." His eyes found Violet's and he smiled again, that same almost apologetic smile. "And you know what we told you."

    Violet nodded slowly, watching his face. "You're still writing for the network, still doing your show. How do you manage that?"

    "We have boundaries," Eddie said with a shrug. "There are me things and us things. Work is a me thing."

    "Unless it involves heights," added Venom. "Then it is an us thing."

    "Are you getting this?" Violet asked Trouble. "Are you paying attention?"

    "Yes," replied Trouble in a petulant tone. "Teaching is a you thing. No eating students. No eating faculty, no matter how much they irritate us. No talking unless it's between classes or during a break." The hoodie shifted uncomfortably around Violet, who reached up to scratch under the back of the hood and Trouble sighed in contentment. "For someone who longs for freedom, you have a lot of rules, Violet."

    "It comes with the territory," said Eddie. "Being human has a lot of rules. Passing for normal in American society has a lot of rules." He opened his mouth, then closed it again, watching Violet's face.

    "Being Black in America has a lot of rules," Violet said with a small smile. "You can say it. You've got a major advantage over me in this, Eddie. You're white and male. The rules tend to relax a little more for you."

    "Not that much," Eddie grumbled and Venom chuckled. 

    "I've got the trifecta," she continued. "I'm female, Black, and hard of hearing. I take possession of the Deaf culture as well as the Black culture, though the Black culture didn't take as much possession of me. The school I went to was mostly white and when I got out and into the world, the Black Deaf culture wasn't as much interested in a white ASL girl." She shrugged and spread her hands with a sad smile. "My mother just wanted the best for me, so she did everything she could to get me into a good school for the Deaf. She didn't mean to cut me out of part of my heritage."

    Eddie's eyes were wide. "I didn't know there was that much of a divide in the Deaf community."

    "Racism is everywhere," sighed Violet. "When ASL is formalized by whites, the Black Deaf community takes it back. It's as much a different dialect as rap is from classical opera."

    "Isn't most opera in Italian?" asked Trouble and Violet swatted the top of the hood. "Ow."

    "You get the idea."

    "Does Brie--"

    Violet shook her head. "Brie is hearing," she said, signing the designation. "In a lot of ways, I've been lucky to have her. It's hard living alone sometimes. If the pizza delivery guy decides to knock instead of ringing the bell, which also rings my cell phone, he'll be standing out there a long time if Brie isn't right there to tell me."

    "Less of an issue now," murmured Trouble, flexed her claws against Violet's ears and her tongue ran along her jaw affectionately. 

    "Mmm." Violet subsided with the last of the fudge in her mouth, letting it melt while she thought. "I should probably be getting back," she said quietly after she had swallowed. "It's getting close to three and if I've been home all day with a migraine, I should probably try to look the part."

    "Do you mind us checking up on you every once in a while?" Eddie asked. "Y'know, slime daddies worry." Venom made a disgruntled sound that made Violet smile.

    "I don't mind," she said. "I like that. Slime daddy." She signed it, rubbing her fingertips together pointing upward, then rubbing her right hand against the back of her left before bouncing her thumb lightly off her forehead, fingers fanned. 

    Eddie grinned. "Very expressive."

    "ASL is a very expressive language," Violet said. "It's entirely visual, pictographic, even. In some ways, it's just a codified version of the kind of body language humans do naturally when they're talking to each other. You don't necessarily need to know the signs to get the gist of a conversation." 

    "I look forward to learning more of it," Eddie smiled. "Well, I guess we'll see you at Mrs. Chen's."

    "Most likely," agreed Violet. "Thank you again, Eddie. Venom. For everything."

    "Our pleasure," Venom replied happily. "Thank you for being open to our daughter." He stood up when Violet did and they hugged each other. "Be good," he added to Trouble.

    "I'd like to see you make me," she giggled back.

When Brie came home from school, she found her sister folded up on the couch under a heavy fleece blanket, her head ducked down under a dark green hooded sweatshirt and her hands wrapped around a coffee mug that no longer steamed. “Enjoying your iced coffee?” she grinned and signed when she got between Violet and the television. 

Violet blinked at her, then looked down at the mug, lifted it to her lips and made a face when she felt the cold coffee against her skin. “It’s cold,” she announced.

“Want me to make more?” Brie asked. When Violet nodded, Brie grinned to herself and went into the kitchen. She had learned how to make coffee right before her tenth birthday and even though she didn’t like the taste of the bitter brew, she loved to smell the grounds. She put a filter into the small coffee pot, measured the grounds, added the water and turned it on to brew before she got herself an apple out of the fridge and brought a banana to her sister from the table. “Banana,” she said, extending it.

“That’s not coffee,” Violet replied in a grumpy voice, recoiling from the fruit.

“It’s good for you,” Brie said and balanced it on her sister’s knee. “Eat,” she signed, fingers collected into a point with her thumb and touched to her lips twice. She turned away to take off her jacket and hang it up, but paused when she heard a slurping sound and looked back. “What was that?” she asked in spite of her awareness that her sister couldn’t hear her.

“What was what?” Violet asked back and Brie blinked.

Slowly, Brie came around the couch to study her sister where she sat lumped up under the blanket. The banana was completely gone, peel and all. “Vi?” Violet lifted her eyes, looking as bleary and semi-conscious as she usually did when she’d been home with a migraine. “Where’s the banana?”

“I ate it,” Violet said with a snort. “Didn’t you just tell me to?” The edge of the sweatshirt’s hood drooped slightly and looked almost wet for a moment, but the impression vanished when Brie blinked. 

“Where’s the peel?”

Violet held very still and Brie stared at her, confused and worried as her cheeks started to darken with a blush. Her lips twitched, then pressed tightly together before she closed her eyes in an agonized expression. “Not right now, Brie.”

Brie waited, since with her eyes closed, communication would be that much harder. Violet didn’t open her eyes and Brie huffed, putting her hands on her hips. “Vi,” she said loudly. Violet flinched. “Violet.”

“I just don’t feel good,” Violet snapped and pulled the hood down tighter around her face. “Leave me alone.”

Brie sighed and reached to gently shake her sister’s knee. “Do you want me to make dinner?” she signed when Violet peeked at her from under the hood.

“I…” Violet went silent again with a puzzled expression on her face. “I was going to order in Chinese. I didn’t do that, did I?”

“No,” Brie smiled and leaned down to kiss her sister’s forehead. “You should try to nap if your head is still foggy.” Violet nodded absently, then snuggled down under the blanket. “Where did the hoodie come from?”

“Eddie brought it,” murmured Violet, but her hands signed “slime daddy.”

“Slime daddy?” Brie asked with a laugh, repeating the gesture. Violet’s eyes popped open wide and she stared up at her little sister in embarrassment. “Since when is Eddie ‘slime daddy?’”

“This isn’t going to work.”

The foreign voice came from Violet but didn’t move her mouth. Brie stared and scrambled backwards as the hoodie seemed to shimmer and engulf her sister. “Stop it!” Violet’s voice snapped and the hoodie receded with the inexplicable aura of a scolded puppy. Violet sighed and swung her legs down so she was sitting on the edge of the couch. “You don’t have to scare the shit out of her.”

A second head slithered up Violet’s shoulder and a pair of hands materialized below the sharp-toothed face. “It was faster,” the creature signed.

Brie’s eyes rolled back white and she hit the floor with a thump while Violet and Trouble looked over in exasperation. “Well, there went a gentle introduction,” sighed Violet.


End file.
